83. J. B. Heinrich, Dogmatische Theologie, vol. X, p. 797, makes much of this: "A miracle which belongs peculiarly to them, wrought not by but on the holy bodies, is their incorruptibility through the centuries. No doubt this incorruptibility can in many cases be explained by purely natural causes; but in many cases the miracle is obvious. It is especially evident when a portion only of the holy body remains uncorrupted, particularly that por- tion which was peculiarly placed at the service of God during life, as the tongue of St. John of Neponac, the arm of St. Stephen of Hungary, the heart of St. Teresa, etc. And especially when, with the preservation of the body there is connected a pleasant fragrance instead of the necessarily following penetrating corpse-odor, or when everything was done, as there was done with the body of St. Francis Xavier, to bring about a speedy corruption." It is aston- ishing what stress is laid on this incorruptibility of the body of the saints. Thus Herbert Thurston (Hastings's ERE, VIII, 149) thinks it worth while, in a very condensed article on Lourdes, to record, of Bernadette Soubirous: "It is noteworthy that, though her body at the time of death (1879) was covered with tumors and sores, it was found, when the remains were officially examined in 1909, thirty years afterwards, entire and free from corruption (see Carriere, Histoire de Notre-Dame de Lourdes, p. 243)." On this matter see A. D. White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology, 1896, II, pp. 10, 11, who sets it in its right light, and men- tions similar instances — of those who were not saints.
84. Accordingly, Percy Dearmer, Body and Soul9, 191 2, p. 262,
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says: "For the greater part of Christian history faith-healing was mainly centered in relics, so that probably more people have bene- fited in this way than in any other." Speaking particularly no doubt of the ancient church, but in terms which would apply to every age, Heinrich {op. cit., X, p. 796) observes: "Now, however, these miracles are regularly wrought at the graves, in the churches, and often precisely by the relics of the saints," and he is led to add two pages further on (p. 798): "There is scarcely another doctrine of the church which has been so approved, established by God Himself, as the veneration of the saints and relics" — that is to say by miraculous attestation.
85. For the literature of pilgrimages, see the bibliography at- tached to the article "Wallfahrt und Wallfahrtsorten," in Schiele and Zscharnack's Religion.
86. Hastings's ERE, vol. VIII, pp. 684 f. It is a refreshing note that Meister Eckhard strikes, proving that common sense was not quite dead even in the opening years of the fourteenth century, when he asks, " What is the good of the dead bones of saints ? The dead can neither give nor take."
87. W. R. Inge, Christian Mysticism, 1889, p. 262 and note 2, is prepared to maintain that "a degraded form" of fetichism is exhibited in much else in modern Roman Catholicism than its relic- worship. He finds it exhibited, for example, "by the so-called neo-mystical school of modern France, and in the baser types of Roman Catholicism everywhere." He adduces in illustration Huysmans two "mystical" novels, En Route and La CathSdrale, and comments as follows: "The naked fetichism of the latter book almost passes belief. We have a Madonna who is good-natured at Lourdes and cross-grained at La Salette; who likes 'pretty speeches and little coaxing ways' in 'paying court' to her, and who at the end is apostrophised as 'our Lady of the Pillar,' 'our Lady of the Crypt.' It may, perhaps, be excusable to resort to such expedients as these in the conversion of savages" (Query: Is it?); "but there is something singularly repulsive in the picture (drawn apparently from life) of a profligate man of letters seeking salva- tion in a Christianity which has lowered itself far beneath educated paganism." "Our Lady of the Pillar," "Our Lady of the Crypt," are two images of Mary venerated at the cathedral at Chartres, information concerning which is given in the article entitled "The oldest of our Lady's Shrines: St. Mary's Under-Earth," in The Dolphin, vol. VI (July-December, 1904), pp. 377~399- On Mary's shrines in general, see below. Those who have read Huysmans's La Cathedrale should read also Blasco Ibafies's La Catedral, and
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perhaps Evelyn Underbill's The Lost Word, that the lascinations of cathedral symbolism may be viewed from several angles.